Where Things Come From

Nothing in your house was made in one place, and that is recent and deliberate rather than natural. Take an object apart on paper and find six countries in it. Then the two ditches that rearranged the map: a canal a hundred miles long takes 5,614 km off the way from Shanghai to Rotterdam, and another takes 13,487 km off New York to San Francisco — both computed, both checkable. Ends on why a thing is made where it is, and what it costs a country to have no coast.